Fighting with Facebook: A New Year’s resolution

Saturday

Jan 4, 2014 at 8:00 AM

Dave Clarke

I’ve been thinking about writing this column for several months and this might be the time to do it.I don’t do New Year’s resolutions because I can’t think of anything.This year, however, I have decided getting on Facebook will be my resolution for 2014.That’s easy, you say. Getting on Facebook is a snap. Millions have done it, including me, and thousands do it every day. So what’s the problem?I can’t seem to STAY on Facebook, having been “kicked off” three times in the past two years. Why? I wish I knew. I really want to be on Facebook. I like it. A lot of people I know are on it. How come they won’t let me on?My Google search engine and e-mail have become indispensable tools in my daily work and family communication, but I hadn’t connected with social media until two years ago when my Aunt Peggy turned 90.I received an e-mail from a relative telling me there was a video of her 90th birthday party at the nursing home in Colorado where she was staying. I was excited. I hadn’t actually seen my aunt for years and even though she was in failing health, the thought of seeing and hearing her inspired me to get on Facebook, which I did, and enjoyed a few tear-filled minutes of Aunt Peggy with her pointed birthday hat, cake and family members singing “Happy Birthday.”Now that I was on Facebook, I started getting showered with messages from people I knew and some I didn’t know very well wanting to be my “friend.” At first, I thought these people were actually reaching out in person over the Internet to hook up with me on Facebook. I have since come to believe this is all done by Facebook matching common known factors. One of the people I “friended” was Kris Wexell, Cambridge native formerly of Regional Radio and now at WRHL in Rochelle. I started receiving posts from people I only remotely knew but who had all recently been married, and figured out Kris probably deejayed their weddings and Facebook probably put us together for some reason.I “friended” my cousins in Colorado, California and Indiana and sister in Colona, and a few others I knew, and then started hitting “no” when someone “asked” to be my “friend.” I even figured out how to load my photo onto the page.Things were fine for about six months then, for no reason, one day I could not access my Facebook page. Instead, a page came up inviting me to sign up for Facebook as if I had not been on before. I thought the reason might be that my e-mail address had changed since first signing up. I entered my name, new e-mail address, birthday, and a new password, which was specifically requested.That’s when the circular process began. When I sign up, I am told I can’t because I already have an account. When I ask to recover my account, I can’t because I have to sign up for a new account. Dizzying, huh?I really want to be on Facebook so I wrestled with it for a while, trying different approaches, and finally got my page back on. Once again I was bombarded by requests from “friends” to connect but being wiser now, I was more selective, keeping the picks to family. Facebook was back. I saw photos from my cousin’s daughter’s graduation from college, and shots of another cousin’s successes in running marathons. Then, about six months later, the page was gone one day when I called it up and the invitation to join Facebook once again filled the screen and wouldn’t budge.Once again, I made several attempts, tried different things from following instructions to trying just about anything, and once again, found my page out there somewhere and was back in business.That was until last May — oddly enough, it was just after my now 92-year-old aunt in Colorado whose birthday video had initiated my interest in Facebook, died. It was like someone at Facebook knew I was only supposed to have access as long as she was alive.This time, I was tired of trying to get back to my page. I followed all the “help” prompts but eventually figured out the Facebook “tech team” member sending me messages on how to fix the problem was computer driven.For a while, I was being sent six-digit numbers which were supposed to reconnect me with Facebook. They never worked and finally the “tech team” stopped responding to my requests. Have I been abandoned by Facebook? For what reason?I became frustrated with being unable to find a way to communicate with a real person to whom I could explain my problem. Everyone I asked has never heard of anyone being dropped by Facebook and no one has come up with a way for me to get back on. In searching the Internet I found several sites which claimed to help solve problems with Facebook. I sent details to one site and got a response telling me they could end my woes for $28. Not much, but it’s the point. From a blog-type site I learned Facebook is notorious for not being customer friendly. No news to me. It might be because of the sheer size. I recently learned from a story on the TV news that teens are leaving Facebook in droves because it’s becoming the “old folks” destination. At the same time, it is not expected to hurt “the Internet juggernaut” which was reported to be the second most popular web site in the world with more than 1 billion users.I have Facebook pages for the Henry County Humane Society-Kewanee, Black Hawk College, Section III FFA, the Star Courier, and a few others, bookmarked on my Firefox page and check them several times a day in gathering news with no problem. But when I try to call up my sister’s Facebook page, I get “content unavailable” and am once again invited to sign up. When I fill in the blanks and hit “sign in,” I am told I already have a Facebook account. Just where that page is and how I can get to it, however, remains a mystery.My resolution for 2014, therefore, is to get back on Facebook and get caught up on what my cousins have been up to before the end of the year.